Posted
by
samzenpus
on Friday February 11, 2011 @04:46PM
from the test-and-re-test dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Some historical figures are just too interesting to leave alone, even when they're supposed to be moldering in the grave. That's why medical researchers dug up Tycho Brahe, bombarded Napoleon's hair with neutrons in a nuclear reactor, and did everything they could think of to King Tut. Discover Magazine has 8 stories of delayed diagnoses and extreme postmortems."

It couldn't, though. The United Federation of Planets has only a few hundred member worlds; the only available figures for the Empire suggest it's at least in the "millions" category. The Empire inevitably must require a vast fleet to keep said vast territory within its grasp, internally; by contrast, Starfleet only needs to do border patrol on... not even all of its borders.

In the Star Wars universe you can drive from planet to planet without even needing a hyperdrive. Their idea of 'fast' is 1.5x the speed of light. Therefore they are likely inside of a miniaturized galaxy not unlike the one referred to in Hitchhiker's Guide where an entire battle fleet was swallowed by a dog. The entire resources of the Empire would be defeated by a small hand-phaser.

What good is there in spending millions of dollars to find out that Professor Plum killed King Tut in the library with the candlestick? What are you going to do about it? Arrest someone who dies thousands of years ago? Have the current Pharoh make a law banning candlesticks? The information might be somewhat interesting, but how much should we spend to find out? The library, the candlestick, Professor Plum (and his descendents) are probably all just dust in the wind by now.

Exactly. I think ="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks">Henrietta Lacks [slashdot.org] is a better example. Basically, she had a tissue sample taken from a uterine tumor without her knowledge in 1951. The sample thrives in vitro, and has been used in many studies that pushed the envelope of science, from the testing of the Salk Vaccine to Aids research to, of course, cancer research as originally intended. In fact, the sample survives so well in vitro that it has contaminated many cell lines used in resear

The first immortal cell line ever grown was that of Henrietta Lacks in 1951, who had cancer, and her cells are still living in many labs throughout the world--about 20 tons worth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks)! Scientists, literally, won't let her die.

Ahh. You beat me to it. I thought I had scrolled down far enough. It's so annoying that the first few pages of topics not directly tech related are always "I misread that as..." Prevents real discussion.

The first immortal cell line ever grown was that of Henrietta Lacks in 1951, who had cancer, and her cells are still living in many labs throughout the world--about 20 tons worth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks)! Scientists, literally, won't let her die.

They couldn't let her if they wanted. Her cell line has a strange mutation that completely bypasses cellular apoptosis. In simple terms, her cells are incapable of reaching a natural pre-programmed replication limit and die of old age!

There is this book called Testing Testing or something like that (in 1990s I heard of the book from someone who trains others to administer professional engineering license tests), it is not about taking tests but about society's pervasiveness of tests. There are tests for people before they are born, many tests in school years, driver's licenses, job related tests, and tests after people die.

An elementary school teacher calls "timed tests" (i.e. 10 minutes for students to complete a arithmetic exam) "dr